10 Cheesy Pick-Up Lines for Writers

There's one in very nightclub. You know the type. That creepy pick-up artist who eyes you from across the bar, cocktail in hand, then sidles up to you, looks you up and down, and says .... 

(Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash)

But no, lose the nightclub. Now you're in a cafe next to a bookstore. And everything about you says "WRITER." That introverted way about you. Glasses. Unassuming clothes. And, of course, an open book or laptop next to your pumpkin spice latte.

And up walks another writer, but instead of a cocktail in his hand it's a cappuccino, and in the other a copy of something pretension enough to worthy deep discussion. Maybe Tolstoy. Maybe The New Yorker. He's got a man bun and an ironic but neatly trimmed beard. A real hipster. The sort who boasts about his Great American Novel but is still searching for that bit of inspiration to get it started.

Then he invites himself to sit at your table, looks you up and down, and says...


10. "I like the curves of your story arc, baby."

9. "This is one conjugation guaranteed to make you comma." 

8. “You’re my climax.” 

7. "If you show, I won't tell."

6. "Ooh! I haven't seen a 'plot' that big since War and Peace."

5. "I've got some Great Expectations for you, with an Oliver Twist!"

4. "I'm plotting a way into your heart."

3. "Wanna see where I put my apostrophe?"

2. "How about we start with some foreshadowing?"

1. "Hey, girl, wanna see what's between my covers?"

and a bonus!

"Baby, if you were words on a page, you’d be fiiine print."

Do you have another great "writer pick-up line" to contribute? Leave a comment!

Cheers and happy reading!

10 Book Titles So Awesomely Bad They're Good

Sometimes the title of a movie or song is so tongue-in-cheek, so kitschy, so incredibly insane that it isn't just bad, it's awesomely bad. It grabs your attention and makes you eager to learn more. In fact, it's because they are so bad that they are fun. Heckling them while experiencing them isn't just accepted, it's encouraged!

Think of movies like "They Came From Beyond Space" or "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!" (exclamation included!). Or songs like "One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater" or "My Ding-A-Ling." Just about any song by "Weird Al" Yankovic counts.

Why shouldn't books be any different? Oh, sure, you may be one of THOSE types, the snobbish literati who considers the written word sacrosanct and looks down their nose at anything that isn't on Oprah's Book Club list. Hey, more power to ya. There's a place for that. But the rest of us value entertainment of a more lowbrow sort, sometimes.

Here's a Top Ten Countdown of book titles guaranteed to be so bad that they grab your attention:

10. How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety: And Abstinence, Drugs, Satanism, and Other Dangers That Threaten Their Nine Lives by Zachary Auburn

The cats of America are under siege!  Long gone are the good old days when a cat’s biggest worries were mean dogs or a bath. Modern cats must confront satanists, online predators, the possibility of needing to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and countless other threats to their nine lives.

9. Italian Without Words by Don Cangelosi

You don’t need words to speak Italian. You don't have to study Italian or travel to Italy to communicate like a true paesano. All you really need is this unique "phrase book" of the most common Italian expressions, complete with authentic Italian gestures and body language. It's the fastest and funniest way to learn Italian ever published. Now, even if you don't know a single word of Italian, you can learn the most common greetings and expressions, dinner-table comments, hot vows of love, bargaining tricks, insults, threats and curses. This book shows you how.

8. Attack of the Vampire Ninjas! (Aggression of the Super Awesome Book 1) by Jordan Prokosch

Attack of the Vampire Ninjas is the story of Tsukiko and her team of ninjas, who also happen to be vampires, as they hunt the mysterious and elusive Agent Green. Action! Comedy! Vampires! Ninjas! You'll find all this and more in Jordan Prokosch's amazing debut novel!

Because Japanese + vampire = "Jampyre"? And... they write Haikus??...

7. Here Comes the Jampyre: Book 2 of The

Vampire Haiku Chronicles by Arakaki Soto

After the death of her father, Misake vows to keep his legacy alive in Tokyo's criminal underworld. But when she spurns Boss Oh's desire to join families, the elder female Yakuza boss retaliates against many of Misake's businesses. The Jampyre in turn, wages war against the other families, systematically taking each down with the hopes of becoming the sole power in Japan.

For writers everywhere. I feel accused...

6. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why

That Is And What You Can Do About It by Steven Pressfield

Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional. 

From Chapter Four: 

“When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with ev­ery sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?"

The next three are part of a series, all of which make the cut!

5. Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching back, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her. 

Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door...and proceeds to rock Tommy's life -- and afterlife -- in ways he never thought possible.

4. You Suck: A Love Story (Bloodsucking Fiends Book 2) by Christopher Moore

Being undead sucks. Literally. 

Just ask C. Thomas Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he's ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody, is a vampire. And surprise! Now he's one, too. For some couples, the whole biting-and-blood thing would have been a deal breaker. But Tommy and Jody are in love, and they vow to work through their issues. 

But word has it that the vampire who initially nibbled on Jody wasn't supposed to be recruiting. Even worse, Tommy's erstwhile turkey-bowling pals are out to get him, at the urging of a blue-dyed Las Vegas call girl named (duh) Blue. 

And that really sucks.

3. Bite Me: A Love Story (Bloodsucking Fiends Book 3) by Christopher Moore

While some lovers were born to run, Jody and Tommy were born to bite. Well, reborn, that is, now that they're vampires. Good thing theirs is an undying love, since their Goth Girl Friday, Abby Normal, imprisoned them in a bronze statue. 

Abby wants to be a bloodsucking fiend, too, but right now she's really busy with other stuff, like breaking in a pair of red vinyl thigh-high Skankenstein® platform boots and wrangling her Ph.D.-candidate boyfriend, Steve (the love monkey). And then there's that vampire cat Chet, who's getting bigger and smarter—and thirstier—by the minute. Abby thought she and Steve could handle the kitty cat on their own, mais non . . .

The next one was almost a tie for first place....

2. Kung Fu Fighting Vampire Mermaids: Globe Zero by P.W. Lewis

In a time when the seed of evil was covering the planet and the pure had fallen in battle, Priest-Lucius and his daughters, Destiny, Charity, Hope and Faith were punished, tragically torn apart and separated in time by a vengeful supernatural power. 

Desperate to find his daughters, Lucius embarks upon a perilous journey through the ages of time. Finally reunited in the dark flooded lawless future of the human race, Lucius is shocked to find himself in the same war, new jungle “Scumbag Central” and that certain things about Destiny, Charity, Hope and Faith aren’t quite as they should be. 

This family may be gifted, but are they equipped to deal with the sinister forces that lay in wait, and will their hellish past catch up with them?

and Number One is:

1. A Bad Hair Day and Hot Vampire Dinosaur Sex in Space by M.S. Terry

All Rebecca Carrington wanted was some decent hair care products on board the starship, but when Captain Avan Hunter walks into her life, she discovers she has much more primal needs.The six-foot tall, menacing hunk of Adasaurus hotness had her quivering to the tips of her toes, but he was a big, muscular, glorious slab of taboo.

You may have noticed a trend here: 6 of the 10 titles are "vampire" in nature. I guess you can say I'm biased. Or perhaps vampires, themselves, are so diabolically kitschy that they lend themselves to such titles.

I hope you check out some of these. I know I will!

Cheers and happy reading!

Top 10 gifts for writers

So you have a writer in your life and it's time to get them a gift. Sure, they like much the same sort of things as anyone else, but you want something that appeals to their gift of writing, right?

The great news is that, outside of a computer, paper, and printer, and maybe some nice pens or journals, their material needs are pretty simple that way, and they probably already have those things. So what else can you do?

Whatever the occasion, the great news is that most of the things you can give them or do for them are free!

So here are the top 10 things that I think a writer wants most:

10. Buy their book or read whatever they wrote
Seems like a no-brainer, right? It doesn't matter if it's not your genre ("Sorry, but I'm just not into Old West scifi romances."), or you're put off by that double negative in the very first paragraph, or you don't like the scruffy nerfherder character that's introduced in the second chapter. For a writer, every time a page is turned it's an endorphin rush. (And nothing is more crushing to a writer than having their work ignored by the ones they love!). Yes, you may need to plunk down a little money to buy the book, but it's probably no more expensive than a fast food meal and tons more entertaining!

9. Compliment them 
After you've read their work, thank them for sharing their work and tell them what parts were your favorites. See their faces light up as you remind them that their writing isn't total sh*t and they aren't an impostor. We can't all be Stephen King or Louisa May Alcott, but surely some scene in that book that took them years to write touched you in a way that made a lasting impression, right? This gift is free!

8. Leave a review
If they published a book and you read it, then by all means leave a review on their Amazon page (or wherever it is posted online) and on review sites like Goodreads. It only takes a few minutes to click five stars, write up a quick few lines about how the book was awesome, and click "publish". And, yeah, it's free. For a writer, seeing that someone has liked your writing enough to share it with the world is "better than medicine" (as my grandma used to say - and she was a writer, too!).

7. Gift their book to someone
Yeah, that means you have to spend a little money. But you're buying a gift for someone anyway, right? Books are awesome gifts! And by doing this, you've gifted TWO people for the price of one (since the writer will get a small part of the price as a royalty, not to mention their eternal thanks for sharing their masterpiece!).

6. Ask them to sign their book
Doing a book signing for a writer is like putting a camera on an actor. It validates their worth as a writer and acknowledges they've done something valuable. Plus, this way we can pretend that in 50 years it will become a rare commodity after we've hit the big time!

5. Follow them on social media
Most writers who are serious about their craft will have a presence on social media. Chances are you are one of the one billion people who are on Facebook, 330 million people on Twitter, 800 million people on Instagram, or 291 million on Pinterest. Maybe even all of these. It only takes a moment to go to their pages and click "Follow" or "Like". One of the first things a potential agent does when considering whether to pick up the author is to look at the number of followers they have on these platforms. Click "share" or "heart" or "like" on their posts, too. And, yup, it's free and easy to just click that button!

4. Visit their blog and/or webpage
Most authors have an online presence with a webpage and/or a blog. It takes time and skill to make a webpage attractive and useful and to populate the page with information to help them sell their writing. Their blog, too, has articles and entries that they write -- another outlet for their writing -- that you can read and comment on. Simply visiting the page gives them a higher "visit" count that makes the page move up in the rankings. Oh, and if they have ads on their page, click them. It will earn them a few cents. None of this costs you anything, and you just may be entertained and informed by it.

3. Ask a bookstore to carry their book
If they are a published author, it can be difficult to get local bookstores to actually carry the book on their shelves, especially if the author is self-published or an indie author. Asking the bookstore manager or purchaser to please consider carrying it, because you're a fan, will get the author on their radar, and maybe they will actually sell the book in the bookstore because of it. It's worked for me! And other than a little bit of time to call or visit the bookstore, it's free to you!

2. Caffeine
Most of us writers have dayjobs, children, the usual stresses and chaos in our lives, like everyone else. Yet somehow we find the time and energy to write. I tend to write late at night. Some writers do it early in the morning. Or during the lunch break. But we're tired. Lordy, we're tired! We often give up sleep for this passion. So give us the gift of caffeine. Offer us a nice hot mug of coffee or tea. Maybe even splurge a little and get it from a good coffee shop, eh? Yeah, there's a little cost involved in this one, but unless you're importing the coffee direct from Juan Valdez and his donkey, Conchita, then chances are you can afford it. Heck, throw in some chocolate while you're at it...

1. Time!
Speaking of that hectic life... with the dayjob, children, etc, there is precious little time left to sit down, clear the mind, and focus on typing away on our keyboards, lost in our strange little worlds, or staring off into space while imagining the plots of our stories, or holding conversations with our imaginary friends. And all too often that little bit of time is interrupted by the kid running in and wanting to play, or the spouse asking why the trash wasn't taken out yet, or the phone ringing. Trust me when I tell you it is incredibly frustrating not to be able to write. Give the gift of time by allowing the writer in your life an hour or two (or more!) every day to focus, undisturbed, and create the next masterpiece. It costs nothing at all other than a little bit of patience and an understanding that you are still more important to them. Writing is art, and art requires focus and passion. They will be happier and more relaxed afterward, and their writing will be better quality, too!

And, um, do these things for me too, okay?  ;)

Cheers and happy reading!